Childe Harold's American Roman Holiday

In the post "Drink Me" TStockman noted that Americans have a wide streak of Schadenfreude:

TStockmann said...
Here's something written by Mark Ames in an expat magazine published in Moscow back in 2004:

"But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance—and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber the lie, the more they want to hear it repeated.…If I’m an obese 40-something white male living in Ohio or Nevada, locked into a permanent struggle with foreclosure, child support payments and outsourcing threats, then I’m going to vote for the guy who delivers a big greasy portion of misery to the Sarandon-Robbins dining room table, then brags about it on FoxNews. Even if it means hurting myself in the process."

This is nothing new is it.

Lord Byron attributes the same thing to ancient Rome:

I see before me the Gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand -- his manly brow

Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his droop'd head sinks gradually low --

.....

The arena swims around him -- he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

.....

He heard it, but he heeded not -- his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,

There where his young barbarians all at play,

There was their Dacian mother -- he, their sire,

Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday --

....

--George Gordon, Lord Byron

If Lord Byron were writing today about America he would have the same thing to immortalize.

Bread, Blood, and Circus...